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Friday, May 11, 2012

Affordable Cheese Plate for DSLR Rig

When building your own DSLR rig, a “cheese plate” (basically a piece of metal with a bunch of 1/4” and 3/8” holes in it) is an invaluable piece of the equation.

As with most things DSLR, the fact that this simple piece of metal is being used for film (ooh, fancy! it should be EXPENSIVE) has driven the price up unrealistically, and cheese plates often go for more than $60 a pop (I’ve seen them listed for as much as $700 or $800!!!).

I just purchased two of the cheese plates shown above (with the added bonus of 15mm rail adapters on each) on eBay for $33 each (they are $23 without the rail adapter, and the rail adapaters are sold for $15 each) before finding a better price for a cheese plate on B&H. The reason I didn’t find the item on B&H first is because it’s listed as a “Glidecam counter weight,” but it’s the exact same thing as a cheese plate. So $14.95 seems to be the best price going for this item.